I am a social epidemiologist whose research focuses on the impact of modifiable social factors on minority health and health disparities. A primarily line of focus of my research is investigating the influence of racism and discrimination in creating and perpetuating health equities. I use a variety of different data sources (including Big Data) and approaches (including quantitative and qualitative research methods) to advance our understanding of social determinants of health. I am the principal investigator of a NIH K99/R00 and R01 award examining the impact of discrimination and racial bias on health. I also lead the interdisciplinary research collaborative, Big Data for Health Equity (BD4HE). BD4HE is comprised of faculty, trainees, and students from universities across the U.S committed to advancing theories, methods, and findings related to the use of Big Data for health equity research. The group investigates the impact of the social, cultural, and built environment on health inequities and identify levers for change. An overarching objective of the group is to provide a formal space for training, mentorship, and collaboration.
Using my background and training in epidemiology and health disparities and my research using social media data, I am continuing to investigate and address key methodological and measurement limitations involved in quantifying sentiment from multimodal (text and image) social media data and developing publicly available resources toward a generalizable framework for investigating health inequities for race, gender, and sexual minoritized groups.
Check out my work
Wei H*, Hswen Y, Merchant JS, Drew LB, Nguyen QC, Mane H, Nguyen TT. From Tweets to Streets: Association between Twitter Sentiment and Anti-Asian Hate Crimes. J Med Internet Res 2024;26:e53050. https://www.jmir.org/2024/1/e53050/
Nguyen TT. Merchant JS, Yue X, Mane H, Wei H, Huang D, Gowda KN*, Makres K*, Najib C*, Nghiem HT*, Hswen Y, Criss S, Drew LB**, Li D, Allen AM, Nguyen QC. A Decade of Tweets: Visualizing Racial Sentiments towards Minoritized Groups in the United States between 2011-2021. Epidemiology 35(1):p 51-59, January 2024. | DOI: 10.1097/EDE.0000000000001671. https://journals.lww.com/epidem/fulltext/2024/01000/a_decade_of_tweets__visualizing_racial_sentiments.7.aspx#:~:text=The%20proportion%20of%20tweets%20referencing,level%20from%202011%20to%202021.
Nguyen TT, Criss S, Michaels EK*, Cross RI*, Michaels JS#, Dwivedi P, Huang D*, Hsu E#, Mukhija K^, Nguyen LH#, Yardi I#, Allen AM, Nguyen QC, Gee GC. Progress and push-back: How the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd impacted public discourse on race and racism on Twitter. SSM Popul Health. 2021 Sep 10;15:100922. doi: 10.1016/j.ssmph.2021.100922. PMID: 34584933; PMCID: PMC8455860. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8455860/
Nguyen TT, Criss S, Kim M#, De La Cruz MM*, Thai N#, Merchant JS, Hswen Y, Allen AM, Gee GC, Nguyen QC. Racism During Pregnancy and Birthing: Experiences from Asian and Pacific Islander, Black, Latina, and Middle Eastern Women. J Racial Ethn Health Disparities. 2022 Nov 30:1–11. doi: 10.1007/s40615-022-01475-4. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36449130; PMCID: PMC9713108. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9713108/
^denotes advised high school student; #denotes advised undergraduate students; *denotes advised graduate students; **denotes advised post‐doctoral students